


Nothing But a Trail of Dust

by ShootWithIntentToKill



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint Barton's Farm, POV Tony Stark, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Pre-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Tried to be fairly neutral on the accords, house arrest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25897867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShootWithIntentToKill/pseuds/ShootWithIntentToKill
Summary: After Civil War, the Avengers are divided. Tony has moved into the compound with Rhodey and the rogue Avengers are in the wind. Well... most of them. Tony makes a visit to a place he's not sure he's welcome.***After Civil War, Tony visits Clint's farm, where he is under house arrest.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22





	Nothing But a Trail of Dust

The Lexus left a trail of dirt in its wake as it approached the house. Tony had considered taking the suit, or even a plane, but this was the kind of visit that probably required something a little less… flashy. Not that the car wasn’t flashy, but it didn’t fly, which was about as good as he could manage.

He stopped about two hundred feet from the house, which was hopefully far enough that a high-powered projectile fired from the house wouldn’t reach his car. He had a feeling that was hopeful thinking, but he also had a feeling the owner of the house wouldn’t shoot Tony’s fastest method away from here. He got out slowly, all the time thinking that he could just get back in and drive away, but then someone walked onto the porch, and that game was up.

“If you’re here for information, you might as well just leave now,” Laura Barton said. She was holding a child, who was just slightly too old to be called a baby, but wasn’t quite in the realms of toddler-hood yet.

“Funnily enough, interrogating ex-spies isn’t my idea of a good time,” Tony replied. If he emphasised the ‘ex’ a little more than was strictly necessary, who could really blame him?

“You better not be looking for a fight,” Laura told him.

“I would have brought my suit.” Tony decided that bluntness would probably be more effective than any other platitudes he could have told the woman, which she probably wouldn’t have believed. “I just want to talk.”

She considered him for a moment, took a deep breath, then gestured with her head, her arms busy holding a squirming child – Nathaniel was it? “He’s in the barn.”

Tony nodded in thanks, and walked that way.

The barn door creaked as it swung open – the hinges in need of oiling – but Tony wasn’t under any false notion that his arrival wasn’t already known.

“You know, we have a phone.” Clint Barton was bent over the engine of the tractor, tightening some connections with a spanner.

His foot shifted slightly, and Tony looked down to see the ankle monitor, emitting a faint green light. “I wasn’t sure you wouldn’t just hang up,” Tony replied, looking back up to the back of his bowed head. “Do you want me to take a look at that?”

Barton snorted, and finally looked up. “It was broken when we got the place. Just something to keep me busy. You know, Ross already tried to get me to talk. Even if I did know where they’re hiding, there is no way in hell I’d tell anyone. I don’t betray my friends.”

Tony bit back a scathing comment at that. “I’m not here for information. I’m not here to fight either.”

“Course you aren’t,” Barton said. “You would have put your suit on for that.” He hesitated for a moment, then “how’s Rhodes?”

“Paralysed from the waist down. I built him metal braces that help him walk, he’s still learning to use them.” He thought of the man’s comment in the prison; _you better watch your back with this guy, there’s a chance he’s going to break it,_ but quickly shook it away. He didn’t need to be thinking about that right now, although he was sure Barton was as well. “Ross doesn’t know I’m here,” Tony said.

Clint raised an eyebrow, but waited for him to continue.

“Why did you join him?” he asked. “You were out. You have a wife, kids, a dream life, and yet you threw it all away to go and break the law for some accords that wouldn’t have affected you if you hadn’t got involved.”

Clint looked at him for a long time. His gaze was slightly unnerving in how focused it was, like he was waiting for a target. “I don’t give a rats ass about the accords,” he said finally. “I don’t agree with them; I still remember a nuke heading for New York, but they weren’t worth getting involved with. I got involved because of five psycho super soldiers that were going to be released while the law was too busy chasing one. And because you locked up Wanda for one mistake, and because of Barnes.”

“It was hardly locking her up; the compound has a hundred acres, a lap pool- what do you mean Barnes? You don’t know the guy.”

“So now to want to protect someone, you have to know them? Is that how the accords work?” Barton’s voice was filled with sarcasm.

“Barnes is a criminal, a killer!” Tony yelled, but quickly calmed down, breathed slowly.

“I thought you knew he didn’t blow up the UN.”

“I’m not talking about the UN.”

“You’re talking about the stuff he did under mind control.” The look in Clint’s eye said he knew exactly what Tony meant. That meant Rogers had told him; and Tony really didn’t want to know if that was recent, or if all the Avengers had been going behind Tony’s back for years.

“He killed my parents,” he said. “I don’t care if he was in control.”

Barton turned away. “Good to know.” There was a strange tone in his voice, that took Tony a moment to dissect, but as soon as he did, he felt like an idiot. Of course Barton would want to believe Barnes was innocent; he was thinking about his own experience.

“It’s not the same; Loki, Hydra, it’s not the same,” he told Barton, but that sounded weak even to his own ears. “I’m angrier at Rogers for lying about it,” he said. “He knew, for years, and he didn’t tell me. He lied to my face.”

“Lying and not telling the truth are different things,” Barton said, “take it from a spy. Now are you done talking through all your feelings?”

There was something in Barton’s voice, _anger_ , Tony thought. “What’s going on?”

“You mean other than the fact you don’t want me to hang up on you, so you come to my home because you know I can’t get away from you here?” He glanced down at the ankle monitor in disgust. “Or perhaps it’s the fact that the reason I’m not with Wanda, Cap, Nat and Wilson right now is because Ross wanted to lure me out of hiding so he went after my family, who I’ve kept secret for fifteen years exactly for this reason. Or maybe it’s because the only reason they aren’t still a secret is because you announced their existence in a room full of microphones.”

Tony froze. He barely remembered his visit to the raft, as angry as he had been at the time. He suddenly remembered what Clint had said, when he had brought them here to hide from Ultron last year. _“Fury helped set this up when I joined. Kept it off SHIELD’s files, I’d like to keep it that way.”_ As soon as they escaped Ross would have starting pulling at any strings he could find, and Tony had handed one right to him.

“Ross went after your family.” Tony wasn’t sure if that was a statement or a question, but horror was dawning on him. Sure, Barton had broken the law, but going after an innocent woman? Kids?

“Why the hell do you think I turned myself in? Ross’ ruthless, even as a general he did anything he wanted. I would say ask Banner, but…”

For once, Tony was at a loss for words. He, Rhodey and Vision had been told that Barton and Lang had turned themselves in, as opposed to what was written in the press that they had been captured, but Ross had never mentioned going after Barton’s family.

_Would it change anything if you did know?_ Barton was right, Ross was ruthless, but Tony already knew that. You didn’t become Secretary of State, or get a name like ‘Thunderbolt’ for your kind and loving nature, and he knew what had happened between Ross and Bruce. He still stood by the fact that the Avengers couldn’t keep operating with no oversight, and the accords were the oversight the world required. The Avengers operating without oversight just left people getting hurt. It helped that now Pepper was talking to him again.

Barton had broken the law, and now he was being brought to justice. House arrest on his massive farm, with his family, well, there were worse punishments.

He looked around the barn, and spotted a bow hanging on the wall. 

“I thought all your bows were confiscated with the rest of your weapons when you went under house arrest,” he said. It was an obvious change of subject, but he hoped Barton didn’t mind, or at least wouldn’t push it. The man followed his gaze.

“The did, or at least, all the ones they could find,” Barton agreed, “which was less of them than I was expecting. I have to say, I’m kind of disappointed that they thought so little of me. But they really needed to think about the fact that there are five stores within fifty miles that I could ask Laura to buy a bow from, and you don’t need to register to buy archaic weaponry.” He paused for a moment, before adding, “It’s not for me anyway. My kids are getting old enough that they want to start learning.”

Images of another child, in red and blue spandex, flashed in front of his eyes. “Isn’t there a saying? A spy’s worst fear is for their children to follow in their footsteps? Couldn’t the same be said for superheroes?”

Barton stared at the bow on the wall as he spoke. “I can’t say I’ll be happy if they go from shooting targets in our yard to shooting aliens and Nazis, but if they do, the only thing I hope for is that they end up better than me. That they won’t make the same mistakes I did.”

“But if they did? What would you do?”

Barton turned; his eyes narrowed. “Is this about that kid you brought to an Avengers fight in Germany, the one Wilson wouldn’t stop complaining about?”

“You’re one to talk; you brought in that tiny-giant guy.”

Barton scowled. “Lang is at least of drinking age and has actual training.”

“The kid was fine, he can stop a car with his bare hands,” Tony said. “Anyway, he proved useful.”

“He’s still in school!”

“How did you know that?” Tony asked.

“Natasha.”

Tony stared at him. “Romanoff didn’t know.”

“It’s Natasha.”

“Okay, point taken,” Tony sighed. “But the kid was fine; he helped, and he didn’t get hurt to badly. Now he’s back in school, occasionally punching muggers and rescuing cats from trees.”

Tony couldn’t decide if the look on Barton’s face was anger, or disappointment. It may have been a bit of both. “You made a child soldier, and now you think he’s going to go back to his life like nothing ever happened? You’re a genius, Stark, I didn’t think you had it in you to be that stupid.”

“I didn’t make a child soldier,” Tony said.

“You brought a child to fight in our airport smack-down. That makes him a child soldier,” yes, definitely anger. “I’ve met them before, hell, I’ve been one. You don’t just go back from that, into whatever counted as a normal life before. You’ve got him caught up in all this shit, so now you need to deal with it, or you’ll ruin that kid’s life.”

“I am dealing with it,” Tony said. “I’ve got him calling Happy, and I’m keeping an eye on him, through the suit I gave him. He’s fine.” Barton didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry,” Tony said, just as the silence was getting uncomfortable, “for telling Ross about your family. For what it’s worth.”

Barton didn’t reply, but Tony wasn’t really sure what could be said to that. He would have liked to hear ‘it doesn’t matter’, or ‘don’t worry about it’, but logically he knew that would never happen. Barton didn’t do platitudes, and it very much did matter. He guessed silence was an improvement over insults like he had given from his cell in the raft, and wasn’t ‘that doesn’t make anything better’, which Tony already knew.

“Do you regret it?” Tony asked, after another stretch of silence, “getting involved?”

“Every damn day,” Clint replied. “That doesn’t mean I would do anything differently… except shut you up before you told the US government my most important secret.”

Barton didn’t repeat the question back to him, but he still Tony thought about the answer. At the time, he had thought the same as T’Challa, and Romanoff, and Rhodey – Barnes was guilty, Rogers was too blind to see it, and the Avengers needed oversight for that very reason. Did he regret going to Siberia? He always found it hard to regret gaining knowledge, even if it was painful. Just because Barnes was innocent of bombing the UN, didn’t make him innocent. He still had nightmares of a shield hitting something a lot more vital than the arc reactor, of Rogers actually killing him, instead of just leaving him for dead, for T’Challa to find a body instead of a man. Did he wish none of it had ever happened, that Rogers had stopped being bull-headed for one goddamn second and signed the accords and they never had this mess? Sure. Would he personally have done anything differently, had he had another shot? Maybe he wouldn’t have fought Barnes and Rogers, in Siberia. He definitely would have found a way to save Rhodey. But the rest, he wasn’t sure. At night he would wake from a nightmare blaming Cap, but if he and Tony had have talked it out, could they have found a compromise that didn’t involve their fists?

“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I’m going to go.”

“And I’ll be here,” Barton replied, shifting his foot halfheartedly. “Call next time. That way I can hang up on you. Maybe I’ll even let you say a couple of words first.”

Tony’s lips twitched, but he didn’t say anything else, leaving the barn and heading back towards his car. He glanced back once at the house and the barn. Mrs. Barton wasn’t on the porch, and if Clint was watching from the barn Tony couldn’t see him, but there were two little faces watching him from an upstairs window. He gave them a small nod, before got in the car, and started the engine. Very soon, the only sign Tony had ever been there was a little dust, slowly settling on the dirt road.


End file.
